Weinberg Reviews HANNA

Strong women are nothing new, of course, unless you're talking about
"disproportionately strong women in Hollywood flicks," in which case
they are sort of new. What somehow began with Charlie's Angels, survived
Catwoman and two Tomb Raider movies, and ran through movies as
disparate as Run Lola Run, Resident Evil, and D.O.A., is now more or
less mainstream. And while obviously that's a good thing (because, let's
face it, women do kick ass) the resulting films are a mixed bag at best.
Just a few weeks ago we got the faux-empowerment of the scantily-clad
lovelies of Sucker Punch ... and now we see the other side of the coin:
Joe Wright's Hanna, which is easily one of the most interesting examples
of ferocious femininity since Kick-Ass. Or, more specifically, the
always fantastic Leon (aka The Professional).

So with a brief and incomplete history out of the way, one can cut to
the point: Hanna is one of the weirdest, coolest, and most unexpectedly
engaging examples of "young women kickin' ass," and it works so well
for the same reason that Neil Marshall's The Descent works so well: the
gender of the antagonist(s) is not the point. One could argue that
having a pre-teen girl as your action flick's reluctant hero is slightly
more novel than having a boy in the lead role -- and on that we'd be in
agreement. Hanna seems considerably more interested with the
juxtaposition of "assumed weakness" over "clear authority" than it is in
blowing a trumpet for how strong women are.

Encased in a showy but undeniably cool fairy-tale structure, Hanna
is about a young girl who has been trained (in isolation) on how to
survive. We can tell that her father (a quietly commanding Eric Bana) is
some sort of spy or scientist ... but he's also a father who cares
deeply for his daughter. Once the CIA's Agent Vigler (Cate Blanchett, icily cool) is alerted to the
presence of Erik Heller and young Hanna, we're off on a ridiculously
elaborate series of chases that bounces all over Europe. Father and
daughter are separated, but they have a plan to meet at a place called
Grimm's, and the director has a very good time bouncing back between
Hanna's tale and her father's numerous misadventures.

Wright and screenwriters David Farr and Seth Lochhead get the most
out of their miniature "Bourne" concept, and the director is crafty
enough to bring a distinctly strange visual sensibility to an otherwise
potentially generic tale of chase, escape, exposition, and fight.
18-year-old Saoirse Ronan is infinitely watchable as the title
character, which means that even when the film slows down (it happens
more than once in Act II), you'll have no problem simply enjoying the
gal's odd-yet-ingratiating performance. Hanna is a genius, a spy, and a
trained killer in many respects, but she's also just a young girl who's
never heard music before. Bana provides strong authority in his scenes,
while others are simply stolen by a villainous Cate Blanchett, a
strangely disturbing Tom Hollander, and an wonderfully kooky couple
played by Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng. (Young Jessica Barden, as
the odd couple's sassy daughter, is nothing short of hilarious.)

At its core, Hanna is little more than a basic action flick with the
"gimmick" of a young girl as the central character, but in this case
the beauty lies in the details: Wright's commitment to long, smooth
"one-take" action scenes, a pulse-punching Chemical Brothers score that
fits the film like a funky glove, strange and perhaps ultimately
unnecessary digressions from minor yet interesting characters, and a
playful fairy-tale vibe that does in 15 minutes what Sucker Punch
couldn't do in 110.

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